My personal choices are French' Newtonian Mechanics and K&K. I don't believe a solutions manual for K&K exists, and it is a challenging book. Self-study may be difficult but it is well worth going through.

Thank you, ordered the AP French Mech book. It does have all the answers. Ill go through it slowly over time, if there are any issues with my attempts i might refer to another book to compliment. Maybe a more modern treatment like Morin.. looks like they are good complementary texts.

If you want a real challenge, I recommend the first volume of Landau/Lifshitz's trilogy in theoretical physics or V. Arnold's "Mathematical Methods in Classical Mechanics". They can be served as an excellent introduction to mechanics if you are willing to learn necessary concepts in mathematics as you go along the book.

If you want a real challenge, I recommend the first volume of Landau/Lifshitz's trilogy in theoretical physics or V. Arnold's "Mathematical Methods in Classical Mechanics". They can be served as an excellent introduction to mechanics if you are willing to learn necessary concepts in mathematics as you go along the book.

This is probably going to be something I do after I complete French's mechanics. Looks like Landun/Lifshitz really turn the dial up, I think I'll need a solid basic physics/math background before I can tackle that. I think I will end up getting this and Purcell's E&M book when I finish my ODE/PDE courses.

This is probably going to be something I do after I complete French's mechanics. Looks like Landun/Lifshitz really turn the dial up, I think I'll need a solid basic physics/math background before I can tackle that. I think I will end up getting this and Purcell's E&M book when I finish my ODE/PDE courses.

By any chance, do you have a teacher, professor, or even graduate student who can invest his/her time to supervise your reading? L/L and Arnold were my first exposure to physics (except for AP Physics), and I did not have much trouble understanding the mechanics. Of course, I read the book under a supervision of a faculty member who can provide a high-quality explanation and derive equations. Although it is my personal opinion, L/L made basic concepts not precisely clear, which made me to actually come up with my own definitions and adjusted them with a supervisor's help. If you have someone very experience in physics that might be interested in doing a reading course with you, I highly recommend re-thinking about postponing L/L.

Also, you might also want to study calculus of variations and linear algebra (including topics such as tensor algebra) now (you seem to have sufficient prerequisites). They are heavily used not only in advanced mechanics but also other branches of physics (at least I know that they are used heavily in QM and relativity). I assume you already completed Calculus I-III?